When plastic packaging draws blood

A Minneapolis woman who bought a curling iron earlier this year was frustrated by how difficult it was to actually get to the product. When she opened the thick plastic packaging, she cut her hand on the sharp edges. After talking to friends, she realized she wasn’t the only one who was irritated by cumbersome packaging.

“I think they need to change the packaging so you can open it without cutting yourself,” she said to Whistleblower. "I cut my hand pretty bad. Blood was all over the place."

She e-mailed the company and got this response:

“All of our packaging meets the standards and specifications of the ‘packaging industry’ and this type of packaging is used by many manufacturers of consumer products.”

According to a survey of Pennsylvania adults conducted by the Institute for Good Medicine at the Pennsylvania Medical Society in 2009, 11 percent of adults reported that they or someone they knew had been injured more than once while opening the packaging of a gift.

Consumer Reports has conducted tests on "clamshell" packaging to show how dangerous it can be. Click here to read the organization's tips about opening the hard plastic material.

Were you injured this holiday season while opening a gift? Should manufacturers use packaging that is so difficult to open? Is there anything consumers can do to get the packaging industry to use a different product?